Neither one is cheaper in every case, and anyone who says otherwise is selling one of them. Bought leads cost a known amount each and cost you nothing until one arrives. A website costs a known amount every month and may bring you nothing at all.
What the lead companies actually charge
Three companies selling home service leads are Google, Angi and Networx. Only one of the three prints a price in public.
Google’s Local Services Ads bill per lead. Google’s help page “How leads work” says “You’re charged for each valid lead you receive through your Local Services ad.” That page carries no update date. A second page, “How bidding works for Local Services Ads,” says “A bid is the most you’d pay for a lead,” and adds, “When similar local businesses bid on the same lead, those bids determine how much the lead is worth.” That page carries no update date. Neither one prints a dollar amount.
The bidding page does name a volume: “It is recommended to set a minimum budget of 10 leads per week for optimal results.” That is roughly 40 leads a month, at whatever the other trucks in your town are bidding.
Angi does not publish a price either. Its help center says “Lead fees change based on task, homeowner location, and demand for the work” (Angi Help Center, “Opportunities and Leads: Frequently Asked Questions,” updated April 20, 2026).
Networx prints numbers. Its help page says leads “range between $10 to $100+ dollars” on the Pay Per Lead plan “and between $15 and $120+ dollars in the Exclusive Leads plan” (Networx Help Center, “How much do leads cost?”, updated June 1, 2023).
Read that date twice. That Networx page has not been touched in over three years. Treat the range as a rough shape, not a quote for this week. Ask them for a current number for your trade and your zip code before you plan around it.
You are paying for the phone call, not the job
This is the part that settles the argument, and both Angi and Networx say it out loud.
Angi charges early. “You are charged for a lead as soon as both you and the homeowner show interest in connecting with each other.” That is the start of a conversation, not the end of one. Whether you win the work does not change the fee. The same page asks whether leads are guaranteed jobs and answers its own question: “No, Opportunities and leads are not guaranteed jobs.”
Then there is who else has that same homeowner. Angi says “Each time a homeowner submits a project request, we will match them with no more than five pros.” Networx says “A single Pay Per Lead will go to up to 4 contractors in total and are delivered in real-time via text message and email” (Networx Help Center, “Pay Per Lead,” updated December 7, 2022).
So the arithmetic on a shared lead runs like this. Take a $50 Networx lead, near the middle of their published band. If four contractors receive it and all four are charged, that one homeowner’s kitchen brings in $200. One of those four gets the job. The other three paid $50 apiece for a call that went nowhere.
Neither Google page quoted here says whether other companies receive the same lead. Both only say competing bids set the price. That gap is worth asking about directly rather than filling in with a guess.
What a website costs, and the part nobody selling one mentions
A website does not charge per lead. That is the real structural difference, and it cuts both ways. The bill is the same in a dead February and a booked solid July. In February that is a mercy. In July it is a bargain. Nothing about it flexes with your volume.
Here is the part a web company should tell you and usually does not. A website is not a lead source next week. A new site with no history can sit quiet for months. No one can promise you a ranking, a call count, or a mention in an AI answer, and a firm that promises any of those has told you what their word is worth.
So there is a real case for not buying a website right now. If your phone is silent this week and payroll is Friday, bought leads are the faster tool. They arrive in days. Buy the leads, get through the month, and look at a site when you are not bleeding. That advice costs a web company work, and it is still the right advice.
Lead fees are ad spend. They belong on their own line on their own invoice, never folded into a web company monthly number. If you are weighing written offers right now, putting three website quotes on the same footing shows how to strip each one back to parts you can actually compare.
Run the numbers on your own jobs
Stop comparing a lead price to a monthly fee. They are not the same unit. Work out these three instead, using your own invoices.
- Your real cost per lead. What you paid the lead company last month, divided by the leads that actually arrived. Not the advertised range. Your number.
- Your cost per job won. The same monthly spend, divided by the jobs you closed from those leads. This is the only figure that matters, and it is always the bigger one.
- Your twelve month total. Multiply the monthly spend by twelve. That is the size of the thing you are comparing a website against.
Try it with Google’s suggested volume. Google prints no lead price at all, so the only way to put a number on it here is to borrow $50 from the Networx band. Forty leads a month at $50 each is $2,000 a month, or $24,000 a year. If you close one lead in five, that is $250 in fees for every job you win. Neither the $50 nor the one in five is a published Google figure, so put your own price and your own closing rate in before you trust the answer.
Then note what those fees bought. They bought this month. Next month starts back at zero, at whatever the bidding says it costs then. If the monthly commitment on a site is the sticking point, paying monthly against paying once lays out both ways to handle it.
What to do next
Five plain steps, in order.
- Pull your last three months of lead invoices. Count leads received and jobs won. You now have a real cost per job won instead of a feeling about it.
- Ask every lead company in writing how many other contractors receive the same lead. Angi and Networx both answer this in public. A company that will not answer it in writing has answered it.
- Read the agreement before you sign it, including any free website bundled into it. Lead agreements are legal contracts, the terms differ between companies, and contract rules differ from state to state. This is not legal or tax advice. Have an attorney in your own state read the contract, and ask your accountant how the spend should be recorded on your books.
- Do not go all in on both in the same month. Pick the one that fits the problem you have this week, and give it long enough to judge.
- Before you spend anything on a site, find out whether you show up at all today. A free scan runs the questions your customers ask, then shows who gets named and what to fix first.
If a site turns out to be the right move, the pricing page lists the three monthly plans and what is in each one. Compare that number against the cost per job won you worked out in step one. That comparison is honest. A lead price against a monthly fee is not.